Democratic lawmakers from Texas are attempting to prevent a vote on two bills that would restrict voting rights in their state. Republicans’ best shot at maintaining power may well be restricting ballot access, but the purpose of the Democrats’ response is to protect their own party’s power rather than to protect the democratic rights of Texans.

An overview of recent Covid-19 news and global capitalism’s role in creating the current situation.

Rank-and-file activists in CUNY’s faculty and staff union fought against bureaucratic machinations to pass a resolution calling for internal discussions of BDS and demanding that Joe Biden end all aid to Israel and other countries participating in human rights violations.

On Thursday, the PSC CUNY Delegate Assembly will consider a resolution introduced by rank-and-file members of several PSC committees, that condemns the Israeli massacres in Palestine and calls for CUNY divestment from firms that support the occupation. As elected delegates of the union, we support this resolution and call on our union to go further to end U.S. aid to Israel and the occupation of Palestine.

On Friday, May 28, students and allies demonstrated at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in solidarity with Palestine. This is just the latest manifestation of growing support for the Palestinian cause that has seen many rallies in NYC throughout the month.

Thousands gather in Dearborn, Michigan to protest Joe Biden’s support for Israel and the ongoing attacks on the Palestinian people.

Elon Musk has said he has Aspergers. Autism does not make you support imperialist coups or force your employees to work in unsafe conditions during a pandemic. Those are all symptoms of being a billionaire.

The Graduate Workers of Columbia are the first graduate student union ever to reject a tentative agreement with their university. Student workers at other universities should take lessons from the successes of the strong fighting stance they have taken against the wishes of the union bureaucracy.

Joe Biden says that America is recovering. But whose America? The capitalists’ America might be doing okay, but working people are still suffering.

Can science solve the world’s problems? Not as long as researchers are dependent on capitalist investment and access to new technology is limited to those who can pay for it. In his new book, Clifford D. Conner explains why.

A recent report revealed that the USPS has been secretly surveilling social media sites and reporting to the Department of Homeland Security. But the bourgeois function of the Post Office didn’t originate with online surveillance.

Graduate student workers at Columbia will soon be voting on whether to accept a proposal for their first union contract. But the proposed contract sells out almost all of their demands.

President Biden has proposed $715 billion for the Department of Defense in 2022, maintaining its funding at Trump-era levels. The U.S. capitalist economy cannot survive without a huge engine for death, and no amount of progressive legislative pressure can change that.

Today, the CUNY Student Senate is voting on two resolutions concerning antisemitism, one of which uses a definition linking it to any criticism of the state of Israel. Under this definition, students advocating for justice for the Palestinian people could be subjected to disciplinary action on the grounds of discrimination.

Graduate student workers at Columbia University walked off the job yesterday, demanding pay raises and improved health care. Read our report from the picket line.

Stagehands working at a theater in New Haven, Connecticut, have been picketing to demand a new contract for a week. They work in jobs that have been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic.

The current state legislature in New York State is being heralded as “historically progressive,” and many unions and community organizations have high hopes for what they may be able to achieve in Albany. Organizing for direct change, using our strategic positions as workers, has the potential to be much faster and more effective than lobbying politicians.

Last night, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that a $15 minimum wage cannot be passed with a simple majority. Democrats have said that they will not challenge her ruling, making it clear that they will always prioritize the interests of big business over workers.

Biden boasts that his new cabinet “looks like America.” However, whether the cabinet “looks like” the working class has nothing to do with their interests and politics. Make no mistake: these politicians will always put the capitalists above the workers.

Nine months into the pandemic, the working class is suffering more than ever, and it’s only going to get worse between now and mid-January.

As the state and city governments try to balance the budget without raising taxes on the rich, more than 100,000 public employees in New York are being denied their contractual raises and back-pay. Workers at the City University of New York are bringing a resolution for a strike authorization vote to the table, and other public unions must do the same.

A Left Voice editor gives a personal account of her own decision not to vote for Joe Biden, or Howie Hawkins, or any other candidate running on the ticket of a bourgeois party. 

Last week, progressives were frustrated to learn that Joe Biden is reportedly considering moderate Republicans like John Kasich and Jeff Flake for Cabinet positions. But Biden already agrees with Republicans on key issues such as supporting private healthcare, big business, U.S. imperialism, and the police. 

Amy Coney Barrett appeared for her first day of confirmation hearings today. She has years of experience in attacking people’s rights, defending discrimination, and keeping the unjustly imprisoned in jail longer. The Supreme Court needs to go.

The upper chamber of the U.S. Congress went on a month-long vacation as the pandemic raged. That is no coincidence: the Senate is a completely reactionary institution whose members have nothing to do with the lives of working people.

The Department of Labor is using newly-released restrictions for the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) to force families to send their children back to in-person school, even when an all-online option is available to them. These restrictions only serve the interests of the capitalists.

Will CUNY workers finally go on strike? With public school teachers in New York City threatening a strike of their own, PSC leadership implied last week that a possible strike is on the table. With 3,000 part time workers laid off this summer and more cuts expected, and racial capitalism ravaging the CUNY community under the pandemic, a strike is long overdue.

One by one, North Carolina’s universities are shutting down in-person instruction as clusters of coronavirus bloom across the dorms and in off-campus housing. Yet the universities with later start dates are adamantly refusing to change their plans, and college students across the state are continuing to move into the dorms and prepare for the first week of classes.

The U.S. Senate has taken a recess until September without passing any stimulus package to aid the working people of the nation. Abandoned and enraged, U.S. workers are showing increasing interest in a general strike, as evidenced by the trending hashtag yesterday.

The faculty and staff union’s request for a court injunction to reinstate 2,800 workers laid off by CUNY earlier this summer has been denied. By relying on the lawsuit instead of preparing for a strike, the union leadership has failed to protect the jobs --- and health insurance --- of its members.